Despite Trump’s pressure, the Johannesburg G20 Summit was a success, and its documents, in terms of their semantic and emotional engagement, were significantly better than the average G20 text. This marks the end of the four-year presidency of developing countries in the G20. The world hasn’t changed, and the illusions of expectations haven’t been fulfilled. Nevertheless, a certain impact on the global agenda has been exerted, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.
The annual G20 summit concluded in Johannesburg, South Africa, in late November 2025. South Africa’s presidency marked the culmination of a four-year cycle led by major developing economies from the Global South, following Indonesia, India, and Brazil.
Throughout these four years, numerous claims were made that this extended period of presidencies held by developing countries represented a unique opportunity to advance the interests of the Global South – a potential step toward shifting the agenda of both the G20 and global politics in this direction. Of course, readers are free to judge for themselves the extent to which this goal has been achieved. In our view, the answer is more likely “no” than “yes.” In any case, the world has certainly not become qualitatively different as a result of these four presidencies. However, this does not negate the genuine initiatives undertaken by these presidencies to advance their agenda. In our view, Brazil’s 2024 presidency was the most significant of the cycle, as it established the Global Alliance to End Hunger and outlined a framework for global fundraising. However, a year has passed, and the alliance's activities have so far garnered little public attention. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that this undoubtedly important initiative will ultimately fade into obscurity, as have many before it.
The year of South Africa’s presidency coincided with US President Donald Trump’s drastic moves to impose new tariffs on most countries, which has caused a media and political storm among both US allies and developing countries. Furthermore, South Africa itself became the target of Trump’s harsh criticism for what he called the country’s human rights record against its white minority. It seems that Trump’s crackdown on South Africa, at least in its initial stages, was not without the influence of Elon Musk, a native of the country. Moreover, Trump stated that South Africa will not receive an invitation to the G20 summit, which will be held in Miami next year. As a result, neither Trump nor any other senior US leader attended the G20 summit, and the US was represented only by the US Chargé d'Affaires in South Africa.
But even beyond Trump, the degree of disagreement between developed and developing countries on the G20 agenda appears to have been quite acute this year. Ahead of the South African summit, reports leaked to the media that there was a risk that the final joint declaration of the summit might not be agreed upon at all, and that instead only a separate statement by the presiding country would be issued. Ultimately, however, the declaration was agreed upon. This is a credit to South African diplomacy. Furthermore, perhaps in Trump’s absence and the obvious shift in global media attention from the G20 itself to a separate meeting of European leaders on its side-lines regarding Trump’s Ukraine peace plan, the Western members of the G20 may have decided to demonstrate that they could work constructively without Trump and not escalate the situation by failing to adopt the declaration. Moreover, common anti-Trump interests in tariff matters could have united other Western countries with most non-Western G20 members (possibly with the exception of Russia). All this served as a reason to overcome differences and agree on a declaration.
In the history of G20 summits, the risk of not agreeing on a common declaration was publicly reported before the 2018 summit in Argentina. That summit took place amidst sharp disagreements between West and South over trade and migration. But even then, the declaration was ultimately agreed upon, albeit on the lowest denominator. Vladimir Putin said at the time that the declaration’s text was very “rounded”. The second time there was a risk of not agreeing on a common declaration was in 2022 in Indonesia, due to the Ukrainian conflict. But then, apparently to avoid disrupting the process, Russia ultimately agreed to final language that, on the one hand, stated that all countries adhered to their positions on Ukraine, but, on the other hand, included phrases which were, to put it mildly, unflattering for Russia, which, as noted in the declaration, were shared by many G20 members.
Returning to the summit in South Africa, we note that while a year ago in Brazil the fight against hunger was the primary focus, this time the South African presidency has placed the issue of inequality and ways to overcome it at the centre of attention.
In what has become an extremely rare example for G20 declarations, it now reflects, albeit in the most general form, shared value principles. We previously noted that, unlike the BRICS declarations on the one hand, and the G7 declarations on the other, the G20 texts contained virtually no mention of values. Clearly, the differences in approaches between developed and developing countries made this virtually impossible. Now, the first point of the South African declaration states that “solidarity, equality, and sustainability” are “key pillars of inclusive growth”.
It’s also worth noting that in the Russian translation of the declaration, published on the Kremlin website, the text of this phrase contains a semantic difference from the English original. In the Kremlin translation, instead of “sustainability”, it says “sustainable development”, which is far from the same thing. While sustainable development is traditionally understood as a focus on combating climate change, “sustainability" in international documents is a much broader concept, referring primarily not so much to climate as to resilience to the full range of negative impacts. Furthermore, these three value principles have been reordered in the Russian translation. While the English original lists solidarity first, followed by equality – which, again, reflects the key emphasis of the South African presidency – and sustainability third, the Russian translation on the Kremlin website for some reason places sustainable development first, followed by solidarity and then equality. It’s worth noting that this semantic difference in wording between the English and Russian texts of both the G20 and BRICS declarations is not isolated. We previously addressed this topic in our aforementioned report on BRICS values.
In addition to this value principle, the South African G20 declaration draws a connection to the spirit of the African philosophy of Ubuntu, which states that individual countries cannot flourish alone. Clearly, this reference could be interpreted simply as a courtesy to the host country and the fact that the G20 summit was being held in Africa for the first time. However, it is yet another value principle enshrined in the G20 documents. This, again, was previously extremely rare.
Overall, the South African declaration is slightly more emotionally charged than the “average” G20 declaration, which was previously semantically formulated in a very neutral and detached manner, often amounting to little more than a collection of abstract good wishes. This emotional engagement undoubtedly sets the South African declaration apart from others. It’s worth recalling, in this regard, that the BRICS declarations during the South African presidency were also semantically charged and critical of the problem of inequality in the world, which made them stand out even from the general BRICS context.
Unlike in several previous years, assessments of the Ukrainian conflict were not reflected in the text of the declaration. However, it did state: “We further reaffirm that, in line with the UN Charter, all states must refrain from the threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition against the territorial integrity, sovereignty, or political independence of any state.” It also stated that “we will work for a just, comprehensive, and lasting peace” in conflict zones, where Ukraine was mentioned in the general list along with Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Palestine.
It should also be emphasised that the declaration contained no direct anti-Trump statements regarding his tariff policy. It merely stated vaguely that “we meet against the backdrop of rising geopolitical and geo-economic competition,” and essentially nothing more.
In addition to the main declaration, a number of other documents on various G20 tracks were released under the auspices of the South African presidency. Some of these were far more critical of global inequality than the main document. These include the report of the G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality, as well as the declaration of the G20 Social Summit, held a couple of days before the main political summit.
Overall, despite Trump’s pressure, it can be acknowledged that the Johannesburg G20 Summit was a success, and its documents, in terms of their semantic and emotional engagement, were significantly better than the average G20 text. This marks the end of the four-year presidency of developing countries in the G20. The world hasn’t changed, and the illusions of expectations haven’t been fulfilled. Nevertheless, a certain impact on the global agenda has been exerted. Next year, we’ll see the US presidency, which could be the most unpredictable in the history of this format. At the very least, the US G20 summit certainly won’t be boring. We’ll be watching.
